It’s now a commonly accepted fact that there are only two things people do at work – watch YouTube on company bandwidth and attend meetings. Watching YouTube is less complex of the two. It doesn’t require special training and is a skill acquired easily even by marketing managers. Meetings on the other hand are tad more complicated affairs. Your career graph can rise quickly if you learn to navigate through the labyrinth deftly, except in the case of the banking sector, where, of course, you tend to join as a Vice President and steadily work your way down over time. It is thus important that you attain the status of Meeting Ninja as quickly as possible by invoking the boundless Kundalini of Meeting Wisdom that is ever present in your eternal and immortal being.

What Ho!, you say, as you quiver? Worry not. Help is at hand.

History of Meetings

In 323BC, a mighty king named Ashoka invaded the kingdom of Kalinga. In the battle that Ashoka won, hundreds of thousands died. Upon witnessing the calamity, Ashoka is said to have wondered, “Is there a middle path that allows humans to peacefully air grievances and accomplish nothing, while strictly prohibiting participants from inflicting deadly, physical injuries on each other?”

Thus was born the concept of a meeting.

So, what are good reasons to hold a meeting?

There are many good reasons to hold a meeting. Most of them disappeared when a tidal wave engulfed the famed city of Atlantis. However, two have survived till modern day through word of mouth.

Reason 1: To serve as wormholes in the space-time continuum.

It becomes important to observe that 99.999% (five nines) of all meetings ever have been and are weekly review meetings. The purpose of a weekly review meetings is to provide a solitary, tenuous link connecting legions of attendees from various points on the space-time continuum. It is not unusual to find that a review meeting may have originated several decades prior to your first attendance, and that both the original convenor and the purpose of that meeting may long be deceased. The meetings serve as the only connections between generations, dead, alive and those yet to come. Think of them as the Tasseract, the four dimensional world you saw in the Interstellar.

Ideally, review meetings must be convened by a Powerful Person. There’s a good reason for this. It is to encourage attendance. However, the meetings will, in reality, by conducted by the Minion of the Powerful Person (also known as the Convenor). The Minion is appointed as a Stand-In Meeting Coordinator by the Convenor, and harbors aspirations of someday becoming a Convenor himself. It is unlikely that the Convenor will attend the meetings convened by him. The Convenor usually has much longer Youtube playlists than mere mortals and thus needs more time with them. Instead, he will make sudden and erratic appearances in these meetings from time to time, and then proceed to try to digest centuries worth of information in thirty minutes or less. The reason that attendance at review meetings is normally high is that people have no way of predicting if the All Powerful Convenor will be present or not in any given meeting. Most people are not interested in finding out what happens when the Convenor shows up and they don’t. Consequently, thousands of ordinary employees attend hundreds of review meetings without ever encountering the Convenor even once.

By now, it must have become self evident that your immediate objective must be to somehow become part of the Minion Talent Pool and hone your skills towards becoming an accomplished Stand-In. An often overlooked perk of being a Minion Stand-In is that it immediately absolves you of any responsibilities to provide any information or answer any questions during meetings. Rather, you are now pleasantly transformed into the exalted and detached state of a Seeker Of Information. Minion-ship is highly prized, and the benefits boundless. You must prepare yourself to win bloody battles so you can become one.

A typical Monday morning weekly review meeting might proceed in the following fashion.

You: All righty folks. Let’s hear from Moses on the Promised Land Project.

Moses: Umm.. let’s see. I don’t have much to add this week. As I have been saying every week over the last twelve years, I have parted the Red Sea. I’ve completed taking delivery of the Ten Commandments on the mountain. The Project, I hope you are aware, has run into unexpected delays. The Chosen People, thanks to their drunken revelry around a golden calf, have been cursed by God to wander around in the desert. I’ve flagged this as a problem, and color coded it red in my weekly emails. I have no idea as to when they will reach the Promised Land. Is any one listening? God, do you want to jump in here and add some color to this?

God: Yawn. Sorry.. I wasn’t listening. Could you repeat that?

Moses: What’s the ETA on the Promised Land?

God: Umm.. I need to look into a couple of things. Can we take this offline?

You: Sorry guys. I wasn’t paying attention, but it sounds like we’re making progress. Moses, could you put that in an email and send it to me? I’ll need that for my update to the Convenor.

Reason 2: It’s the only way to know if a person exists.

The second reason for which meetings are held is that, often it becomes the only way to know who is on the payroll at a company. As you are aware, every so often companies go through troubled times and are forced to “right size” themselves. It’s a little known secret that decisions around who stays and who gets let go is largely based on physical recognition of individuals alone, and nothing else. Rene Descartes once speculated, “I think therefore I am.” That’s the kind of attitude that doesn’t carry a bloke too far in today’s corporate world. Descartes would have been given the pink slip, two weeks of severance and a firm handshake before he could utter “existential.” People don’t exist unless they are in front of you, tweeting from their laptops.

Important Executive With Powers to Fire People (IEWPTFP): “Who is this Karan chap? Is he that tall, impeccably well dressed marketing bloke who shows up right on time every time for our Monday weeklies?”

Minion: “Yep, that’s him.”

IEWPTFP: “We can’t let him go. Karan is a keeper. He’s a jewel. When he speaks, he doesn’t ruffle feathers. What would we do without him? By the way, who is this Arjun fellow? I’ve never seen him ever.”

Minion: “He doesn’t attend our weeklies.”

IEWPFTP: “Let him go.”

Minion: “Hang on. I’ve heard rumors that he’s the engineer who does all the work.”

IEWPFTP: “Hmm.. I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like a convincing reason to keep him around.”

The moral of the story is that even as you try and free yourself up from worldly acts such as meetings to immerse in the more ethereal Youtube, you must be careful to not let your meeting attendance drop to dangerously low levels. A corporate career, much like life, is about striking that happy balance between the yin and the yang of existence and non-existence.

The What Ho! Guide to Meetings

Keep calm, children. Sit in a squatting, meditative pose, close your eyes and listen carefully to the pearls that I’m now about to cast loosely in your direction.

There are insights as ancient as the universe itself, which have led to the development of black arts, which you must apply in a vaguely detached, zen manner in meetings.

The purpose of meetings, repeat after me, is not to find answers or to solve problems. It is to facilitate as peaceful a gathering of as large a number of people as possible. If you fail to grasp this mystical truth that underlies meetings, I see neither Minionship nor Convenorship in your future. When called upon to share things which may alternatively referred to as ‘statuses,’ or ‘updates,’ or ‘debriefs,’ it is critical to restrict yourself to the state of things, and never get into why they are the way they are. Observations must be limited to pithy phrases like ‘We’re making good progress.,’ or ‘Things are on track,’ or the rare and adventurous, ‘We’re getting there.’ As the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna once said, “The nature of things is to have no nature; it is their non-nature that is their nature. For they have only one nature: no-nature.” You can use this quote in meetings for variety.

Delving into the true nature of reality is unwise in large groups of humans. It’s the quickest route to the death of a martyr. Studies show that attending meetings is one of the most stressful activities a human engages in. You have to remember that you are dealing with humans, who in spite of having gone through millions of years of stress of being chased around by sabre toothed tigers, withstanding the harshest of conditions in the tundra and enduring challenges of reading Chetan Bhagat novels, are more stressed about meetings than most other things. You must assuage them. You must comfort them. You must not upset them. They don’t need the truth. They are not looking for the truth. They don’t need the warm and the fuzzies. They just want to be done and over with it, and to be left alone with Buzzfeed and Youtube. Is that too much to ask for? This is not Facebook. No one wants to know what’s on your mind. Avoid sharing anything that can be interpreted as anything. Empathy for the human condition may just be the single most powerful weapon in your quest for corporate dominance.

What if a meeting breaks out into a conversation?

As it transpires, a meeting that has stayed true to the path of prophylactic statuses and updates, will occasionally veer dangerously towards conversation. These are unchartered waters for meetings. It’s sort of like being on a raft on a peaceful river, only to look a little further ahead to find that you’re about to go over the edge of the Niagara.

Stay calm and do as follows.

You must identify the source(s) of such strife first. Often, they tend to be engineers who have a congenital predisposition towards facts, numbers and precision. They will make unseeemly efforts to bring such things to everyone’s attention. If possible, you must avoid the presence of engineers at meetings. The best tactic is to never tell them about existence of meetings, ask them for email updates and read carefully censored portions of their updates at meetings. But, if for some unfathomable reason, the presence of an engineer becomes unavoidable, then you must do what is humanly possible within your means to make sure that he does not pay close attention to the proceedings. This may be achieved by bringing a large box of doughnuts and placing it tantalizingly within reach of said engineer, who will then spend most of his time pondering if he should reach out for the fourth doughnut or not. Or, you can locate him right next to an attractive colleague. The sight of bare feminine legs has been known to place engineers into trances for lengthy periods.

Like Kim Jong Un, you must mercilessly squash sources of facts, data and informed opinions, wherever you may find them. They must not be allowed to rise to the fore. As Nagarjuna’s (there he is, again) Catuskoti principle insists, “There are four possibilities regarding any statement: It might be true (and true only), false (and false only), both true and false, or neither true nor false.” You must never speak in a manner as to make it evident to the audience which one of the possibilities they are dealing with.

Dear Dr. What Ho!, I’ve heard of something called Strategy Meetings. What are they? How are they different?

Life is funny. Every so often, it will throw you a curve ball. You will discover, at some unfortunate point in your career as you rise, that some meetings are held for the sole purpose of sharing facts, data and informed opinions. These often go by the names of ‘strategy meetings,’ ‘planning sessions,’ or ‘off sites,’ and tend to be rather tense affairs. In such meetings, a bloke who has spent the last 72 hours in some sort of a paradoxically frenzied yet comatose state completing a massive powerpoint presentation, also known as “The Deck,” is placed in front of you and several others in the audience who you will not recognize. Many in the audience do not care about The Deck. They are anxious to get, as expeditiously as possible, back to their Youtube playlists. The primary purpose of such meetings is to evaluate the levels of mental deterioration that an organization has achieved so those who have completely fallen apart can be humanely filtered out. It is vitally important to display mental acuity and presence at such gatherings. The good news is that this is not hard to do.

There are many ways to do this. Nearly all of them draw their inspiration from the Thomson’s gazelle, found in the African savannah. “Tommies,” as our hooved friends are called, are known for their bounding leaps, which, although draw attention to themselves, are meant as a show of strength to predators. There is much to learn from Tommies when it comes to meetings.

One of the things you must do, at some point during strategy meetings, is to suddenly get up from your chair and wander about aimlessly in the room, as though pondering a fundamentally deep thought. This, even as it invites scrutiny of your presence in the room, is an unmistakable show of strength. The Very Important People in the room, gnashing their teeth and looking for a prey to tear apart, will respect and fear the awe inspiring purposelessness of your act, leave you alone and turn their attention towards the weaker of the species.

Natural selection is one of the most fascinating mechanisms of nature. You must use it to your advantage.

Another method involves asking the hapless presenter to go back two slides at some arbitrary point in his presentation, and then staring deeply and just long enough at it to make people wonder if you’re on the verge of a massive break through, and following it up with a casual, “This is interesting. We need to talk. Let’s catch up offline.” That last part, a promise on which you have no intention of following up, will make those higher up on the totem pole speculate as to the nature of your seemingly impressive cognitive powers while subtly signaling that you’re a team player and chose to not humiliate a colleague in public.

That’s not all. Resourceful Darwinian creatures attending meetings have been known to draw random venn diagrams and 4×4 boxes, conduct arbitrary SWOT analyses, connect unconnected dots looking backwards and forwards, and even have gone to the extent of taking imaginary important phone calls during meetings, all with the express purpose of signaling the vitality of their beings to would-be predators. Be careful however. Not everything in the manual works. Objects in the rear view mirror can sometimes be much, much closer than you think. Venn diagrams must be drawn using circles. Drawing them using quadrilaterals can have serious, negative consequences. Remember that the public can take only so much. Take care to not exceed certain thresholds. I once heard a guy proclaim loudly, “This is never going to scale in China,” before being escorted out by armed security.

The Seventh Mandala of Meeting Wisdom

A lesser known and harder to execute technique is the art of usurping another man’s evolutionary advantage. If mastered, it will essentially guarantee that you will rise to become the youngest CEO in the annals of the company. This requires knowledge of the meanings of 1,000 most common English words, basic counting skills and impeccable timing.

Listen carefully. We’re about to enter the Seventh Mandala of Meeting Wisdom.

This is how it works. There will be always be one person in the room who knows the answers. 99 out of 100 times, the Person Who Knows Everything will be an Engineer. This is very good news for you because the Engineer, while in possession of the truth, is completely devoid of any skills when it comes to imparting such truth to large groups of people, who in turn couldn’t tell the Truth if it walked up and slapped them in their faces. This is where you come in. Look around the room. See if you can spot a slightly overweight, wearing-a-shirt-one-size-too-small, unkempt, unshaven individual wearing a wild eyed, skeptical look on his face. He’s the Engineer. Keep a close eye on him because it is just a matter of time before he begins to uncontrollably and spontaneously emit factual, relevant and actionable information. This is neither the time nor the place to ponder as to why engineers do what they do. No one knows. They are the selfish genes of the corporate pool, whose sole intent is to ensure that facts and other important things make it into the next generation of humans. Out of the Engineer’s mouth will, all of a sudden, emanate words of unspeakable wisdom. Ideally, you should seat yourself right next to him. When the Engineer’s brilliance bursts forth, it will leave people dazed and blinded. In fact, many will not be able to recall memories of hearing the Engineer speak. Your job is to listen very carefully to the Engineer, decode the facts and translate to a dumbfounded audience in plain English, using as small numbers as possible. If you do this well, the Engineer’s wisdom thus effortlessly becomes associated with you, and seventy two virgins will garland and receive you in Heaven upon your arrival.

Go forth and conquer splendidly, you Natural Born Minions and Convenors. Those Youtube playlists await.

There is no single idea, which has been more profound or impactful in the history of modern science, than Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

The Impact of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

The ball that Darwin set rolling in 1859 with his blockbuster book, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” continues to be unstoppable. When it first arrived, it dealt a body blow to, and spurred a refinement and tempering of Christianity. Over the last 150 years, it has encouraged a wholesale abandonment of religion. An idea that came to the fore even as Industrial Revolution took roots in Western Europe and America, Darwinism accelerated the transformation of these societies into free market havens, architected around the principle of natural selection. Initially, countries that accepted evolution more readily than others were Protestant nations like England. Although the United States, at that time, was in the middle of a civil war, Darwin’s theory did not go unnoticed. It is no coincidence that these nations turned ‘economically atheist,’ believing in the natural’ capacity of capital to allocate itself to the most deserving recipients, when competition is unfettered. They rejected economic theories that bet on God-like governments to distribute resources efficiently. Although Darwin’s initial inspiration came from economists such as Malthus and Adam Smith, his theory later provided moral justification and has helped shape the course of modern economics in the Western Hemisphere.

Evolutionism’s impact was perhaps felt the greatest in disrupting centuries old social and religious power structures. By adding impetus to political thought, it paved the way for western monarchies to transform gracefully into democratic systems. It captured the imagination of scientists, philosophers and men of letters alike. For the first time, there was a logical explanation for the evolution of life. Darwin provided copious evidence from nature. Most significantly, he provided no role for God in the process. It disabused Christians of their belief that an all-powerful God had created the Earth with all its animals, plants and human beings, in a mere six days. Darwin won such a convincing victory in such a short time that, by the early 20th century, the debate between science and the Church had shifted from the factual integrity of evolution to God’s role in it. The debate within the scientific community had turned towards its mechanisms and speed within a short ten years after Darwin’s pronouncement.

“I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I’ve got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love light in her eyes. I don’t know how to account for it, but it is so.”

“It may be Nature’s provision for maintaining the balance of the species, sir.”

From ‘Carry on, Jeeves.’ By P. G. Wodehouse.

The theory of evolution has been co-opted in ways Darwin may have never intended or predicted. Social Darwinism, as it came to be called, had its dark side. Men in power such as Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson drew flawed conclusions, and took evolution as ‘nature’s sanction’ to enthusiastically propagate a fundamental superiority of a “fitter, more powerful” Caucasian race. Such ideas were openly and widely disseminated in the 1920s and 1930s to justify the imperialist ambitions and domination of the British empire. Churchill stoutly believed that ‘inferior’ societies in Africa and Asia (including and especially India) were ‘better off’ for coming under the rule of the English, who, he believed, brought “civilization” to the uncivilized. In another example, several thousands of mentally disabled Americans were forcibly sterilized in the 1920s, under prevailing eugenics laws. A decade later, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis would take eugenics to horrific lengths when they systematically murdered the old, the disabled, the weak and eventually large numbers of Jewish people, in the name of Aryan supremacy. Darwin was one of the lucky few scientists to see his theory gain acceptance within the scientific community, in his lifetime. He was also fortunate that he did not live to see the perversions, which were wrought in his name. He would have been horrified. There is no other scientific idea from which society has reaped as much inspirationally positive and horribly negative consequences, as the theory of evolution.

There is no other scientific idea, which is as widely misunderstood as the theory of evolution. Over a hundred and fifty years after Darwin, a large majority of the world population has not even heard of it. Millions of children are not yet properly schooled in it. A huge part of the world population outside the western hemisphere continues to stay largely unaware of this remarkable scientific discovery, save for mischaracterized representations in popular culture. Amazingly, belief in God among Americans has not been as much dented by the theory of evolution as in Western Europe. Even today, over eighty percent of Americans profess to belief in ‘some sort of a God.’ Close to a third reject Darwinist evolution outright as a scientific theory. Less than fifteen percent of Americans understand and accept evolution to the point where they are willing to profess to atheistic beliefs.

As denizens of this wonderful Earth, filled with curiosity about our origin, cause and purpose, it is well worth our time to grasp the power of this single idea which, directly and indirectly, led to world wars, created new memes in popular culture, pitted science against religion in an epic clash, triggered the field of modern medicine and changed human history like none other has done. We must do this, regardless of our personal beliefs about the existence, nature and role of God. For, if we fail to do so, we run the risk of missing out on one of the most spiritually uplifting lessons that Mother Nature dangles every day in front of our eyes; that everything, organic and inorganic, shares a common progenitor. That this brief journey each of us has been afforded is but an opportunity to soak in wonder and awe, as we witness the wonder that we call creation.

Evolutionism over the ages.

Charles Darwin was not the first to envisage a creation without the hand of a Creator guiding it. There have been philosophical utterances to this effect from the Greeks. The Ionian philosopher, Anaximander (611 – 546 BC), believed that the world had arisen from an undifferentiated, indeterminate substance, which he called the Apeiron. Vedic thought, from some of the oldest Hindu schools, took a more nuanced position, even going to the extent of describing Gods as those who came after Creation and attributing the origins of our universe and life to no one in particular.

The Nasadiya Sukta, known as the Hymn of Creation, asks-

“But, after all, who knows, and who can say

Whence it all came, and how creation happened?

The gods themselves are later than creation,

So who knows truly whence it has arisen?

Whence all creation had its origin,

He, whether He fashioned it or whether He did not,

He, who surveys it all from highest heaven,

Perhaps He knows. Or, perhaps even He knows not.”

This hymn from Rig Veda has been interpreted as one of the earliest accounts of agnosticism and skeptical inquiry into the origin of all things, not just organic life on earth. Carl Sagan, scientist, describes the Vedic tradition of inquiry best, as one “of skeptical questioning and unselfconscious humility before the great cosmic mysteries.”

However, such speculation was abstract and philosophical, and lost favor as they failed to satisfy large parts of populations, which preferred the simpler, linear narratives of mythologies and gospel.

Fast forward to the early 19th century.

It’s interesting to pause momentarily to examine the times into which Darwin was born, and did his work.

Aristotle-ian natural philosophy, which held sway for over two thousand years, had yielded to the Baconian scientific method, which insisted on formal experimentation, repeatability and falsification. Europe had already entered the Age of Reason and Enlightenment, which saw science and philosophy flourish, frequently to the benefit of each other. French revolution and the Napoleonic era had played out by the end of the 18th century. Newtonian classical mechanics had unleashed the virtuous forces of Industrial revolution by mid 17th century, which led to machine based manufacturing processes. Chemistry had matured as a science. Historians of nature had begun meticulous classification of flora and fauna, leading to the development of biological taxonomy. A Swedish botanist and a first rate scientist, Carolus Linnaeus, filled 180 books with precise descriptions of plants and animals, and logically classified them. To him, we owe our, often, unjustified name, homo sapiens, which literally means ‘wise men.’ There was new understanding of electricity and magnetism, which led to speculation about connections between such phenomena and life forces themselves. Was life a mere electrical impulse?

Geology had progressed, and with it our understanding of the nature of Earth’s hidden layers. Consensus grew that the Earth had gradually evolved over millions of years, and not magically created in one fell swoop as the Bible claimed. Critically, scientific consciousness expanded to consider enormously lengthy periods of time, in contrast to the Biblical time scale of a few thousand years. As new cities emerged in the fervor of industrial expansion, fossils were uncovered. Paleontology quickly grew to be a discipline unto its own right, providing invaluable clues on how life may have evolved.

Even as Industrial revolution gained momentum in Europe and America, a new field of study emerged with intent to drive efficiency in production, and allocation of capital and labor, leading to the development of what we now know as economics. Industrial revolution changed societies dramatically in ways never envisioned. It raised the living standards of citizens, propelled large-scale urban migration and led to construction and expansion of modern cities. Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations,’ and Robert Malthus’ ‘The Principle of Population,’ were written in 1776 and 1798 respectively. Such treatises popularized the idea of “selection” as the natural behavior of free and unrestrained systems. Such thoughts would provide crucial insights to Darwin later as he pondered the mechanism by which life may have evolved on earth.

Most critically (for Darwin), there had been men of science who had already begun questioning the Bible’s version of creationism. Early closet evolutionists included Comte de Buffon, a French naturalist, and Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles, who believed that life had evolved “over a period of millions of years.” Of these, the most important was a Frenchman named Jean-Batiste Chevalier de Lamarck. In early 19th century, Lamarck offered a theory, which explained evolution through a process of conscious adaptation and acquired inheritance. Lamarck’s theory posited that organisms adapted body parts to suit their environments during their lifetimes. Lamarck also believed that such changes acquired during a lifetime were inherited by offspring. The most famous Lamarckian example is that of the giraffes. Giraffes, Lamarck said, evolved long necks by straining and stretching them further and further to reach leaves on tops of trees. He added that this long-necked-ness was inherited by succeeding generations of giraffes, thus leading to long necked giraffes of today. Lamarck’s hypothesis was bold, powerful, intuitive and easy to understand. Unfortunately, it was also wrong. It is conceivable that necks may grow longer as a result of stretching and straining. But, it wasn’t so readily apparent that such traits acquired in one generation could be inherited by the next. For example, children of bodybuilders aren’t muscular unless, of course, they too engage in bodybuilding. Lamarck’s brave attempt was noted widely, but quickly fell into disrepute and suffered ridicule by both the Church and the scientific community for several decades. Notwithstanding this failure, Lamarck was a topnotch scientist and his courage paved the way for Darwin, by bringing the topic of creation into public debate, and dislodging a brick in the wall of dogma that religion had built over the course of a thousand years.

The stage thus came to be set for the event that changed the course of intellectual history of the world.

Evolution by Natural Selection.

Darwin spent five years aboard the HMS Beagle, during the course of which he sailed to the Galapagos Islands among other places, collected large numbers of samples, and recorded meticulous notes. Upon return to England, he married his wealthy first cousin, and dedicated his life to analyzing the samples he had gathered and unraveling the mystery of evolution.

Side Note: It is a remarkable coincidence that two men who most profoundly shaped the course of events in the Western Hemisphere, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, were born the same day – February 12, 1809 – on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. Darwin, at first, went to study to be a doctor at the University of Edinburgh. Unable to stand the sight of blood and even fainting once, he dropped out of medical school and went on to study his first love- natural history, at Cambridge University.

Although the scientific community had warmed up to the prospect of evolution, the theory had suffered grievous wounds during Lamarck’s attempt to storm the fortress. To gain acceptance of his fellow scientists, Darwin knew that it was not enough anymore to merely say that organisms had evolved. He had to explain *how* they had evolved.

It is said that Darwin was influenced by the writings of Robert Malthus, as he pondered the mystery. In his influential essay, Malthus predicted extraordinary growth in human population driven by a rise in the standard of living caused by the Industrial revolution. He argued that such growth in population would lead to a massive increase in the supply of labor, which in turn would cause lowering of wages and lead to poverty. He described such mechanisms as ‘competition,’ ‘survival,’ and ‘allocation.’ They struck a chord in Darwin. If artificial systems could allocate and optimize in the their own best interests, it seemed conceivable to him that nature could do the same.

In a book published in 1859, Charles Darwin described his theory of evolution based on the principle of natural selection. He explained it along four dimensions: Variation, Inheritance, Selection and Time.

Variation aka Why are there so many species and how did they come about?

Darwin defined species as a population of organisms that is capable of inter-breeding only within its own population. Inter-breeding produces a population of offspring that, in turn, inter-breeds, and so on. Over long periods of time, species undergo “evolution,” which are variations that cause a new species to arise. Thus, all species have descended as a consequence of modifications of species that came before them.

To put it simply, Darwin theorized that all species must have a common origin in some sort of an irreducible ‘lower’ life form. ‘Higher’ life forms are no more than lower life forms that have evolved over millions of years. He said that this was the only way we could explain the vast diversity of species found in nature.

Inheritance and Selection aka Why does a species appear the way it does?

Darwin then explained why survivors survive and how others go extinct, using a mechanism called natural selection. This answers questions such as, “Why do giraffes have long necks?” and “Why are zebras striped?”

Darwin observed that nature typically erred on the side of producing more organisms than it could support. These organisms struggle to survive as a result because they have to compete for resources. He pointed out that competition tended to be fiercer within species than between species. Within a species, there are variations in traits. He believed such variations to be random, and not acquired through conscious effort or deliberate strategy, as Lamarck had stated. When changes occur every so often in the environment, those members of a species, which happen to have a beneficial set of traits suited to the environment, are selectedby nature to survive. Such evolutionarily advantageous traits are inherited by successive generations until the environment changes yet again, which may cause a potentially new set of beneficial traits to propagate, in a fascinating theater of survival and reproduction.

In the Darwinian world, giraffes didn’t deliberately stretch and grow long necks. Instead, there were once many variations of giraffes, with necks of varying lengths. Long necks happened to prove to be “evolutionarily advantageous” for survival. Consequently, over millions of years, all giraffes but the long-necked ones were filtered out by natural selection.

This, in essence, is the principle of natural selection. Natural selection, has also been described – first by a philosopher, Herbert Spencer, and later by Darwin himself – as “the survival of the fittest,” an unfortunate turn of phrase because it led to much misunderstanding of the principle.

Side Note: “Survival of the Fittest”

Being taller, faster, more intelligent, fair-skinned or stronger is often misunderstood as “fittest,” by those who incorrectly grasp the implications of Darwin’s theory. “Fit” in the evolutionary sense is merely the possession of those traits, whatever they may be, which are most advantageous in a given environment, at a given period in time. For example, if the environment were to somehow change to favor pygmies in Sub Saharan Africa, nature would favor them over non-pygmies and the population of pygmies would rise faster than others. In fact, it is conceivable that the environment could favor “lower” life forms over “higher” life forms in the case of a drastic event like a nuclear holocaust.

Darwin’s theory does not imply the superiority of one species over another. It does not imply a hierarchy within species. It merely attempted to explain what is seen in nature, without being judgmental about the merits and outcomes of nature’s approach. Comprehending the term, ‘evolutionarily advantageous,’ may be the secret to understanding much of the workings of nature and human behavior itself.

A Gradual Process of Change.

Darwin emphasizes the role of time in evolution by describing it as a process of gradual change. In his book, he wrote, “Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps.”

Since Darwin explained natural selection as a slow process, it came under fire almost immediately, from paleontologists and field naturalists who had observed discrete jumps in speciation from the fossil records. Indeed, natural selection was discarded (even by Darwin himself) within a decade of his book being published.

Nevertheless, Darwin had achieved a stunning coup. Within two decades of his book, evolution came to be accepted as a scientific fact. It also marked the beginning of a long running feud between science and religion, which has not abated yet.

Side Note:

You, my friend, are an outcome of an extraordinary process, which started billions of years ago on earth.

As the American author, Bill Bryson observes, in his inimitable wry style,

“Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result — eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly — in you.”

Congratulations!

Why Darwin is a hero.

It’s interesting to note that Darwin did not set out with an express agenda to destroy Christianity or religious belief. He was not religious himself, and did not hold a grudge against religion. In fact, he agonized over the consequences of his theory on society, and delayed publishing the book by over twenty years until Alfred Russell Wallace (whose details I have unpardonably skipped) forced his hand by independently coming up with natural selection and writing to Darwin about it.

What makes Darwin exceptional is that he was a scientist in awe of nature. He sought to answer the profound question of our creation, and once in possession of what he believed to be the truth, spoke it with grace and humility. None exemplify the spirit of science better than Darwin. He started with an admission of ignorance and remained open to ideas that challenged his beliefs, until his end. For this reason, he is one of the great modern heroes.

Coming back to natural selection..

Darwin’s natural selection ran into rough weather pretty quickly. Paleontologists, who saw discrete, sizable evolutionary jumps in fossil records across eras, refused to get on board. Later biologists challenged the theory on grounds that it did not satisfactorily explain certain quirks in nature, such as altruism. Given the damning counter evidence from fossil records, Darwin himself abandoned natural selection and shifted towards Lamarckian-ism in the latter half of his scientific life.

Enter genetics.

The question of ‘how do traits pass from one generation to another’ began to consume biologists after Darwin published his seminal work. An Austrian friar, Gregor Mendel, a forerunner in genetics research, had done work in cross breeding hybrids of pea plants. He recorded but didn’t go as far as to analyze the implications of his observations. He even shared his findings with Darwin, who unfortunately failed to see their significance at that time.

When Mendel was re-discovered in 1900, things began to move at a rapid pace. Hugo De Vries, a Dutch botanist, introduced the words ‘gene’ and ‘mutation’ into the vocabulary. By 1910, Thomas Hunt Morgan, an American, had provided evidence for inheritance through chromosomes. The most significant post-Darwinian inflection came from Ronald Fisher’s work on Mendelian inheritance. Fisher is considered the founding father of modern statistical science, design of experiments and biometry, and has been described as the ‘greatest biologist since Darwin’ by none other than Prof. Richard Dawkins. Fisher combined statistical analysis of genetic evidence and Darwinian theories into what came to be known as “modern synthesis,” and architected the emergence of “evolutionary biology,” starting in 1918.

Side Note: Interestingly, Fisher became a vocal proponent of eugenics, a principle that encouraged society to select fitter humans for survival. Fisher showed, using census data, that fertility was inversely proportional to social class. As families became more affluent and climbed the social ladder, they became smaller. Fisher hypothesized that these smaller families unfairly thrived, in spite of their lower reproductive output, solely because of their economic advantage. He campaigned for subsidies to lower income, larger families based on the earning potential of the father. Not coincidentally, Fisher himself had a large family and his financial resources were meager.

Eugenics caught the imagination of politicians, philosophers, writers, journalists and others. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, about a mythical society based on eugenics was published in 1932. Teddy Roosevelt, Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Woodrow Wilson and John Maynard Keynes were prominent personalities who subscribed to the concept, which at its core, played to the idea of maintaining the purity of the Aryan race. Although Hitler and the Nazis took inspiration foremost from Nietzche’s Ubermensch ( ‘Superman’) which was not based on racial grounds, their eugenics laws were based on similar laws which prevailed in California in the 1920s. Today, eugenics is (rightfully) considered scientific racism, as it pre-supposes an erroneous principle of racial superiority, which is supported neither by Darwinism nor by genetics.

By the 1940s, the onion had been peeled yet another layer to reveal the presence of DNA and RNA as the main constituents of chromosomes, and DNA as the primary carrier of genetic information. In 1953, DNA structure was resolved to be a double helix by James Watson and Francis Crick. By the 1960s, the genetic code, a set of rules by which information encoded within genetic material is translated into protein by living cells, was ‘cracked’ by a team of scientists which included Har Gobind Khurana. By 2003, 99% of the human genome had been sequenced with 99.99% accuracy. The last hundred years have truly belonged to genetics and genomics.

The Modern Synthesis.

Incorporation of genetics and population studies led to Neo-Darwinian theories of evolution in the first half of the 20th century. These theories emphasized the roles of mutation in causing variation within species. Natural selection, in Neo-Darwinism, was re-interpreted to define the natural process by which the frequency of genes in a population was determined. Neo-Darwinist theories have been subsequently replaced with current views of evolution known as the Modern Synthesis.

Per Modern Synthesis, several mechanisms, not just natural selection, are responsible for evolution. Of these, genetic drift is considered to be as crucial as natural selection. Traits are carried by discrete entities called genes, which are inherited. Variations within a population are caused by alleles, a “sub-type” of genes. Genes are composed of chromosomes, which in turn are constituted of DNA and RNA, which are the repository of genetic information and the messenger for carrying genetic information respectively. Speciation (formation of new species) occurs as as small changes (mutations) in genes. In other words, macroevolution is a consequence of a lengthy series of microevolutions.

In Modern Synthesis, evolution works at the level of genes, phenotypes (observable external traits) and populations, while Darwin’s theory was applied at the level of organisms, species and individuals. Research in evolutionary biology is now heavily focused on speciation, addressing debates around the speed and size of mutations.

That thing that makes you, you and no one else but you…

It is now believed that all genetic information is contained in DNA, which exists in the form of a double helix structure, and made of chemicals called nucleotides. The most crucial part of nucleotides is the base, where the genetic information resides. The sequence in which bases appear in the DNA is somewhat like how letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences. The ‘sentence’ or the sequence then provides the information required to create and sustain an organism. In other words, DNA is that thing which makes you, you and no one else but you. Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of these bases are the same in all people. Biologically, there is very little to distinguish one human from another.

An important property of DNA is that it can replicate; that is, make copies of itself. The double helix structure of the DNA is interesting because it provides two strands, each of which can serve as a pattern for duplicating the sequence of bases, thus providing tremendous resilience and stability to DNA. The ability of DNA to replicate itself is critical because when cells divide, each new cell is required to have an exact copy of the DNA that was present in the old cell. When new cells are formed through mitosis and cytokinesis, each cell receives a copy of DNA, which they check for errors in duplication. Errors are usually caught and the flawed cells are destroyed. However, it is possible that errors may not be detected occasionally and allowed to exist. These errors, known as mutations, are the cause for microevolution, if they happen in gametes, which are cells that participate in sexual reproduction. Such errors may also lead to cancer and genetic diseases. If DNA couldn’t replicate, there would be no life as we know it. On the other hand, errors in DNA replication can lead to the worst of diseases. In that sense, DNA is both the giver and destroyer of life.

In a nutshell aka ridiculous simplification of some very complicated things…

Genes, which are made up of DNA, are the basic functional units of heredity. They are commanders. They contain the blue print, for how to create an organism, and provide instructions for the creation of proteins, which are required for the structure, function and regulation of a body’s tissues and organs. What are proteins? They are complex molecules, which are made of long chains of smaller units called amino acids. The sequence in which amino acids are found in the chains determines the type of protein. Amino acids, in turn, are created from nitrogenous (containing nitrogen) bases. The Human Genome Project has estimated that humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes. In humans, genes could vary in size from a few hundred DNA bases to over 2 million bases.

Every person has two copies of a gene, one inherited from each parent. A huge majority of genes are the same in all people, excepting for a small number (less than 1 percent) which are slightly different from person to person. Such genes with minute differences in their sequence of DNA bases are called alleles. It is these small differences which contribute to each person’s unique physical features and make us look different from one another.

Equally remarkably, just four nitrogenous bases, which lead to the formation of 20 amino acids, account for the diversity of all life on earth.

Our distant cousins.

It may not be apparent to us, at first glance, that a wine grape may be a distant cousin. We share a quarter of our genes with that fine fruit. All animals, plants, and fungi share an ancestor that lived about 1.6 billion years ago. Every lineage that descended from that progenitor retained parts of its original genome, which embodies one of evolution’s key principles: ‘If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.’

Side Note: We share close to half our genes with fruit flies, over 80% with dogs and 90% with chimpanzees.

On a lighter note: It is now increasingly believed that those who work in the Indian news media may be our closest cousins yet, bridging the gap between chimps and humans.

Of course, we aren’t really much like a wine grape at all. As Carl Zimmer points out, “The genes we still share, we use differently, in the same way you can use a violin to play the music of Mozart or Benny Goodman. It is less surprising that we share more genes with chimpanzees than with rice, because we’ve shared most of our evolutionary journey with those apes. And in the small portion of our genes with no counterpart in chimpanzees, we may be able to find additional clues to what makes us uniquely human.”

This is another intriguing question. Of all species, humans have the highest diversity in terms of external traits. There are all kinds of people on the planet. This is especially true of the human face. Why is there such a breathtaking variety in the human face, compared to animals which aren’t as diverse in this regard? For example, most elephants (within a gender) look similar, except for the girth or the height. How and why did we learn to process facial patterns and be able to tell friends from strangers when we meet them? For animals, the need to be identified as individuals doesn’t appear to be all that important. For humans, it’s everything. Why? As it turns out, evolutionary pressures may have pushed humans towards this vast variety of facial features and structures that we see today. In other words, to be distinguishable from each other has been evolutionarily advantageous for human survival. It’s easy to imagine scenarios where having identical humans could lead to problems. Clones of an individual being mistakenly killed off by an enemy. Being wrongly accused of murder. We would have many problems if we all looked identical.

Bringing home the Baconian..

In the last few decades, a large part of Christianity has sought to come to terms with evolution by steering towards a middle path between the prevailing evolution view point and the Biblical account of creation as prescribed in the first chapter of Genesis. While continuing to stress God’s initial act of creating the universe and all it contains, they try to reconcile evolution as an expression of His creative activity. Although such hybrid views may provide comfort to some, the fact remains that scientific evolutionary ideals see no role for God; neither in the origin of the universe, nor in the origin and development of life and man.

A mountain of evidence makes modern evolution theory undeniable. There are those who deny it on the grounds that the biologist’s method is not Baconian, and based on circumstantial evidence. It is true that a large portion of the evidence for evolution has been circumstantial. But, if it looks like a duck, and quacks like one, the chances are pretty good that we’re looking at a duck. Deciphering the mystery of evolution has rather been like assembling a jigsaw puzzle with myriad pieces. As each piece falls into place and fits neatly with others that have come before it, and as a picture emerges, it is but the most obstinate dogmatic that will turn his face away and deny it. Further, biological research has come a long way since the days of Darwin, incorporating complex statistical, mathematical and computational methods, and now resembles work done in quantum mechanics or chaos theory, fields that are unquestionably scientific. The “theoretical biologist” is a dying breed, and biology merges more and more into computation and mathematics with each passing decade.

So, where does evolution leave us?

According to the mechanistic evolution theory, the universe and life in general, including humans, are products of impersonal interactions between matter and energy over eons of time. Everything was an accident. The universe appeared for no presumable reason or purpose, as did life.

As the French molecular biologist, Jacques Monod pointed out, “Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, lies at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution…. The universe was not pregnant with life nor the biosphere with man. Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game.”

The belief that our existence can be attributed to nothing more than a long series of fortunate accidents, raises interesting questions about our ability to comprehend the nature of truth. In other words, is it possible that our reason and intellect are wired to comprehend reality only in ways that suit our survival?

Charles Darwin himself agonized over such implications. He wrote, “But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?”

Darwin intuitively comprehended that nature was terrific at optimizing, but terrible at strategizing. If living organisms survive only on the basis of a tactical, non-strategic natural selection process, then it follows that human logic and reason are products of such natural selection too. In which case, conclusions drawn by human reason may never be known to be true, but instead only as valuable in their contribution to the survival of the human species. In utilitarian terms, truth that arises from human reason can then only be defined as what works, and not necessarily as what is true. We may thus be irreconcilably divorced from being able to discover the purpose of our existence, for we cannot determine if of our conclusions are true or if they are premeditated by survival instincts. Indeed, all scientific and spiritual inquiry may thus be undermined.

Natural selection implies that a man does not possess free will. Instead, he is programmed by forces of natural selection to act solely upon million year old survival impulses, which deny him freedom of action and thought, just as a fanatical religious believer would shut the doors to Heaven on the face of an unrepentant sinner. To hang on to evolution and simultaneously, even in the face of unavoidable conclusions of that theory, to hold on to belief in human purpose, dignity, free will, and ethics outside of the context of survival, is an unresolvable dilemma. One could try to escape the quandary by theorizing that life and man are not solely products of natural selection, and that “other factors” may be involved. But, to do so would not just undermine the central tenet of the theory of evolution, but would also re-introduce the role of the divine into creation.

As humans, we possess an intriguing affinity for virtues such as goodness, kindness and happiness, which may not always be consonant with survival. It is not obvious if such spiritual aspirations have survival value. Are those who cast aside their quick-to-judge-and-act survival instincts in favor of kinder-gentler non-judgmental ones destined be martyred by evolution? Are we to be denied happiness, because it may not have survival value? Implications of a naturalistic worldview such as evolution are simultaneously liberating and ominous, even for the most modern and secular parts of our selves.

Friedrich Nietzsche famously portrayed a madman walking through a marketplace, proclaiming, “Where is God? I shall tell you. God is dead. We have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?” Science has sought man’s liberation from God. It has sought God’s death, through a mechanistic theory of evolution. But, even as we find ourselves alive and liberated from the tyranny of God’s salesmen, we come face to face with the death of our own reason and intellectual freedom. This may just be the great dilemma of modern, secular humans; that by embracing truth as we come to understand it, we make ourselves ineligible to receive any further knowledge on its nature.

Happy journeys.

Note: I last formally read Biological Sciences in high school, well over 25 years back. I claim no expertise in this fascinating area. Here, I have attempted to describe what I believe is the most important scientific idea that I have come across, in layman terms and language. My observations on the clash of Darwinism and Christianity (and religion in general) are not meant to offend, but to state as a matter of fact, how things were and are. If they offend, my sincere apologies. If there are errors or mis-statements in above (which I’m sure there are), kindly let me know and I will fix them. Many thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.

Hundreds of millions of children went to school and complained about home work. Millions didn’t get that chance.

Stock markets rose. Stock markets fell. People made money. People lost money. Some became rich beyond their wildest dreams. Some lost their savings to their great shock. Most didn’t even know.

Men broke women’s hearts. Some cried. Some shrugged their shoulders. Women broke men’s hearts. Some shrugged their shoulders. Some cried. There were millions of smiles. There were millions of tears.

294 billion emails were sent. 2 million blog posts were written. People spent 472 billion minutes updating 532 million statuses and uploading 250 million photos on Facebook. They spent 22 million hours on Netflix, 18 million on Pandora, and bought 378,000 new iPhones.

Men killed men. Men raped women. Some were just angry. Some did so because they felt they needed to. Some will escape. Some will be forgiven. Some will not seek forgiveness. A lot of people became angry hearing about what others had done. Many retreated to lives of quiet desperation, flitting from one debacle to another.

Moms hugged children. Children refused to eat their vegetables. Women wondered what their husbands thought. Husbands remained oblivious. Families re-united. Others said goodbyes.

Some rose at the crack of dawn. Some were unwilling to rise. Many went to work. Many looked for work.

People argued. They debated. They mocked. They praised.

Some were dissatisfied. They wanted more. Others were despondent. They could have used more.

Some promised to start new lives. Some ended theirs. Some were cared for. Some went to bed in tears. Some died unsung.

There was joy. There was sorrow. There was life. There was death. There was fear of tomorrow. There was promise of a new day.

It was the best of days. it was the worst of days. It was a day of wisdom. It was a day of foolishness. It was a day of belief. It was a day of incredulity. It was a day of light. It was a day of darkness. It was day of hope. It was a day of despair. We had everything before us. We had nothing before us. We were all headed to Heaven. We were all going directly the other way.*

Ray Cummings, considered the father of science fiction, described time as “nature’s way of preventing everything from happening at once.” John Wheeler, an American theoretical physicist, added, “And, space is its way of preventing everything from happening to me.” If there wasn’t time, everything would happen at once. And if there wasn’t space, everything would happen in the same place.

Side note: Wheeler collaborated with giants like Bohr and Einstein, worked on the (in)famous Manhattan project and taught physics at Princeton, where his graduate students included Richard Feynman and Kip Thorne. Dr. Thorne, who teaches at Caltech, is one of the producers of the movie, “Interstellar.”

There are so many different worlds. We have but one. But, we live in different ones.

What exactly is time? Well, it depends on the world from which the question is posed. We could, simplistically, divide the worlds we’re aware of, into three distinctly separate ones based on our powers of perceiving them. First is the world of classical mechanics described by Isaac Newton. Second is the world of relativistic mechanics described by Einstein as a space-time continuum. And last but not the least, is the quantum mechanical world of sub-atomic particles, which Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Dirac, Schrodinger and others collectively described.

Dire Straits. “Brothers in Arms.” (video)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eB5tUZwEys

The world as we know it.

Newton’s laws of motion and gravitational theory concern themselves primarily with the world as we know it. They describe a familiar world of bodies filled with masses that are acted upon by forces and the ensuing consequences of such forces or lack of them. Newton explained a lot of things observed on earth and in the skies neatly. Kepler used Newton’s laws to show that planets moved in elliptical rather than circular orbits, which appeared to be true.* For example, Newton showed that Kepler’s laws of planetary motion would apply in the solar system, as consequences of his own laws of motion and gravitation. Nearly every mechanical invention over the next several hundred years became possible through these suddenly obvious insights, which we take for granted today.

*Corrected. Many thanks to @chasing_mirage for pointing out that Kepler and his laws preceded Newton.

However, the laws of classical mechanics became increasingly problematic when used to explain ‘minor’ anomalies that began to be observed when more accurate telescopes and other measurement systems came along. For example, Newton’s laws, as amazing as they are, led to a strongly held but erroneous belief that the speed of light was relative, and puzzlement when measurements showed otherwise. Another famous example is an anomaly in Mercury’s orbit, which, try as they might, scientists could not explain.

Time in Newton’s world is ‘not relative’. In other words, time provides an immutable backdrop to the grand stage of the universe on which bodies move relative to, collide with, or attract one another. Material objects possess masses and are capable of moving large distances with predictable speeds. But there is no such notion as ‘the speed of time’ in Newton’s world.

For all practical purposes, Newton’s laws explain the world to people like us, who lead unscientific lives and are unaffected by cosmic anomalies and mysterious events that go on in the universe. We understand why something that is tossed up in the air returns. And, so on.

Newton’s laws describe a world of massive objects, low speeds and large distances. They began failing, when applied to ‘other’ worlds with minuscule objects, enormous speeds or sub-atomic distances, a matter which caused great consternation by the end of the 19th century.

Time slows down when you’re having fun..

Einstein formulated the Special Theory of Relativity in 1905 to address Newtonian limitations, in which he proposed a radically different relationship between space and time. Instead of being an unchanging backdrop to the cosmic drama, time, he said, was an active participant and suggested that its nature was ‘relative,’ just as the nature of space was relative. He predicted that time would move slower when an object moved faster. To be more accurate, time would go by relatively slower on an object such as a planet or a spaceship, which was moving relatively faster than another one. This dilation of time, he said, would be noticeable only at very high speeds, typically exceeding 10% of the speed of light.

Einstein thus began describing our broader universe, a world of massive objects, large distances and enormous speeds. At the heart of his Special Theory was an assertion that the speed of light was an ‘absolute’ and a constant in our universe.

Think of our universe as a massive computer program which is designed to reflexively change space and time to keep the speed of light ‘c’ constant anywhere in it. Einstein called the combination of space described by location (x,y,z) and time ’t’ as the ‘space-time continuum,’ a four dimensional interwoven mesh, whose intrinsic nature was to dynamically adjust itself to keep ‘c’ constant.

Regardless of where you measure the speed of light in the universe or the conditions under which you measure it, the speed of light is constant. Why? No one knows. That’s the way things are, in our version of the universe.

You already live in a space-time continuum. You just don’t know it yet.

What’s space-time continuum? It’s a mesh of things that have happened, presently happening or will happen. If you didn’t realize it, we already employ the concept in our day to day lives. When you arrange to meet a friend, you exchange four pieces of information. When you say, “I’ll meet you at the Starbucks near the intersection of Los Gatos Boulevard and Highway 85, at 9am tomorrow,” you’ve provided ‘x’ and ‘y’ coordinates of the meeting point, have indicated that the ‘z’ coordinate (height) is zero and that the time coordinate is 9 in the morning on a day, which is one day after today. No one ever just goes, “Let’s meet at 9am tomorrow,” or, “Let’s meet at the Empire State Building,” because it would raise the questions of where and when. History is another great example of a space-time continuum; a compendium of events which have occurred at specific places and times in the past.

Gravity.. is working against me…

It’s now time speak of that invisible elephant in the room – gravity.

Believe it or not, this thing called gravity, which we experience every second of every day of our lives, is one of the least understood phenomena in physics. Newton described it as a property which is both exuded and experienced by anything that is made of matter. He described the gravitational forces of attraction between two objects as being dependent on their masses and the distance between them. It turned out that things were not quite as straightforward as that. For example, light, a massless entity, was observed to “bend” as it traveled through neighborhoods of even small stars like the sun.

John Mayer, “Gravity.” (video)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUhmXKmHHd0

Einstein spent the next ten years coming up with a General Theory of Relativity which explained the nature of gravity quite differently. Gravity, Einstein said, was not just some intrinsic property of matter. He described it as something which arises when matter interacts with the space-time continuum. Say what?

Okay, let’s try this again.

In the beginning, there was a lot of energy concentrated perfectly in a place called ‘singularity’ which was smaller than a billionth of an atom. One fine day, the singularity began to expand. In fact, it took just a few nano seconds before the singularity expanded to form the space-time continuum or the universe as we call it. Space and time were born simultaneously like a four-headed baby, in a spontaneous moment of cosmic creativity.

Somewhere, sometime in those first few inflationary moments, Mother Nature pulled yet another rabbit out of her hat. Something called matter arose in space-time continuum. Why and how matter arose is a great mystery of our universe. The current theory we have is that of the Higgs field, present throughout the universe, instrumental in transferring mass to those particles known to have mass. Some one described a universe as something that happens from time to time. I guess you could say the same about matter.

So, anyway.. coming back to gravity.

As matter mysteriously arose in the space-time continuum, it began creating distortions in it. The word used in physics for distortions is “space-time curvature.” Imagine if you placed a bowling ball on a rubber sheet. It would create a depression in it, which is another way of saying that the bowling ball creates a curvature. Gravity, Einstein said, is a result of matter interacting with space-time to create curvatures. The larger the mass, the greater the curvature and thus greater the gravitational force or field.

It turns out that when the curvatures are very very large, i.e. when there are intense gravitational fields, they can cause time to slow down. This is called gravitational time dilation. For example, both Jupiter and the Sun have masses significantly larger than that of the Earth. Clocks on both Jupiter and the Sun would tick slower than one on the Earth. The clock on Jupiter would gain only about 10 minutes every 100 years compared to the one on Earth, which wouldn’t make a trip to Jupiter worth while. A clock on the Sun would gain about 4.6 days every 100 years. A clock on Mercury, a planet smaller than the Earth, would tick slower * faster. You get the gist now, I’m sure.

Think of gravity as something that results from matter creating curvatures in space-time, and time as one of the variables which gets stretched (slowed down) more and more as the curvatures gets larger and larger.

Just so we are clear, you will feel time lapsing at ‘normal speed’, at one tick per second, regardless of whether you’re on the Earth, on Jupiter or inside a black hole. You will not experience time going by faster or slower. It’s like everything stretches or contracts at the same time so you can’t tell any difference, unless you become aware of a reference point that lies at a different curvature on the space-time continuum. The phrase used to describe this in physics is that you and other objects are traversing along different space-time paths.

Time, the great vector.

A Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, said, “You cannot step into the same river twice.”

In philosophical terms, Heraclitus described a fundamental property of time in our universe: that it moves forward and only forward. We can move forwards and backwards, and up and down in space but are prisoners in the present. We, it appears, are condemned to watching as moments tick by, rigidly positioned at the intersection of the past and the future. This notion of the arrow of time, as it came to be called, arose first in a field called thermodynamics, in which a gentleman named Ludwig Boltzmann described something called entropy using statistical methods. Simply speaking, entropy represents the ‘amount of disorder’ in systems. Boltzmann astutely observed that entropy was such a thing, which only increased in our universe. It’s a way of saying that things in the universe as a whole, happen only in a forward direction, and are not reversible. You can make an omelette from eggs, but you can’t get eggs back from an omelette.

The relationship between entropy and time is an intuitive one. If we were to somehow be able to “restore” order and decrease disorder in the universe, conceivably we could engineer it back to its original state, which is just another way of saying that we could reverse time itself. The fact that we find the universe today in a state of ‘higher entropy’ implies that it once started off in a ‘low entropy’ state. Why did that even happen? Why was it not in a steady state to begin with? Why does it accumulate disorder? What causes it to do so? Would it not make sense for it to decrease its disorder? How long will entropy increase in the universe? And when entropy reaches some sort of a maximum, will our universe and time begin reversing their directions? These are all fascinating questions, to which there are only speculative answers today. All we know for now is that our universe is becoming more and more ‘disorderly’, and time marches resolutely and uni-directionally forward.

Side note: Boltzmann was so profoundly distressed by philosophical objections to his findings that he became acutely depressed in his later years and eventually committed suicide.

The Third World of Uncertainty.

Deep down in the recesses of matter, at the sub-atomic level, there exists a world of great uncertainty, where an entirely different set of natural laws govern. As we break matter down into elements, then atoms and eventually sub-atomic particles, a dramatically different picture emerges. There are several things that are weird about this quantum mechanical world, as compared to the worlds of Einstein and Newton. Before I get there, let me try first to describe this world and how we came to stumble upon it.

One of the first clues to the quixotic nature of sub atomic particles came from experiments performed on the behavior of light. Of the many that were attempted, the most famous experiment in capturing the central puzzles of quantum mechanics is the Young’s double slit experiment, conducted in 1801.

It’s relevant to note that, at the time Young performed his experiment, light was thought of to be a ‘wave’ which is to say that light was not thought of be composed of ‘particles’ with mass. Young merely set out to prove the wave nature of light with his experiment. It’s a pretty simple experiment which consists of passing light through two narrow slits placed close to each other on a piece of cardboard or metal. As expected, light diffused and spread as it passed through the slits, forming a predictable ‘interference pattern’ on a screen, which is caused when waves of light interfere with each other. Every one was overjoyed, and Young slept soundly at night after that.

Fast forward a hundred years to the early 1900s. By this time, there was enough evidence to believe that light might be, in fact, be composed of minuscule packets containing discrete amounts of energy, also known as ‘quanta’. Max Planck and then Einstein built equations to describe the energy that could be contained in each packet of light called photon, which led to the discovery of the ‘photo electric’ effect, for which Einstein received the Nobel Prize. This set the stage for the study of what came to be known as quantum mechanics.

The tale of Young’s double slit experiment saw a dramatic twist around this time. A curious person asked, “What if I were to shoot a single photon through the double slits, which one would it pass through?” By this time, scientists had built equipment capable of generating single photons and detectors which could spot them as they moved along.

When a single photon was shot at the double slits, one of the most mysterious events ever observed in physics happened. The photon appeared to pass through both slits at the same time to form a familiar diffraction pattern earlier seen by Young. How was it possible that a single photon could enter through two slits at the same time? Did the photon pass through one slit, and then somehow traveled back in time back through it and then re-enter the other slit to interfere with itself to form wave patterns? Mind boggling stuff. There is no accepted answer to why this happens till this day.

And now comes the really weird part. Another curious person decided to place a detector after the slit. The detector was like a security guard, keeping a close eye on the photon to identify the slit through which it passed. A magical event happened. When the detector was placed, the photon decided that it was going to behave itself, and exactly like a particle. Something about the act of observation, which the photon somehow seemed to be aware of, made it abandon its wave nature. This experiment has been repeated with other particles such as electrons with similar perplexing results.

Quantum mechanics describes the world of minuscule things (sub atomic particles), which are separated by minuscule distances. As things stand, it is believed that there are twelve fundamental particles (an electron is one of them) which combine to form higher order particles such as protons, neutrons, etc. which in turn combine to form atoms and molecules, eventually culminating in things like babies, trees, rocks, water, clouds, earth, moon, stars and all such matter that exists in the universe. The Standard Model isa set of equations which describe the state of each functional particle and the conditions under which it forms and exists.

Let’s talk about time in this world.

What’s intriguing is that the arrow of time does not show up in the laws of physics which govern these fundamental particles. The world of electrons, bosons, quarks and other fundamental particles is what is called a probabilistic one. The existence of the particles at a particular position is defined by a set of probabilities. An electron could manifest itself in positions A, B and C, each with a probability of ‘p’. In other words, it exists everywhere and yet nowhere. At any given instant, the wave function describing the electron “collapses” to manifest it at a specific position. The same is true for other particles. It’s like Mother Nature is trying to make up her mind as she goes along, considering infinite possibilities and ruling in favor of one, at each and every instant.

Let’s say we were to somehow be able to build a gigantic model using every tiny bit of data starting from the Big Bang to now, and run a simulation on a massive supercomputer. Even if we did that, we would not be able to predict with certainty what would happen the very next second. That’s because even Mother Nature is yet to decide what she is going to do next.

Here’s the great paradox: Formation, existence and transformation of the fundamental particles, which make up all matter, don’t appear to subject to the arrow of time. They exist in a timeless state of no causality, memory, metabolism, death, etc., in a world of probabilistic fluctuations. The arrow of time seems to be an overlay, almost an after thought, on top of these laws of physics, and applies only to the higher order blocks of matter built from fundamental particles. Our worlds become less and less predictable as we zoom inwards. Weird.

This theory of fundamental unpredictability made many uncomfortable, including Einstein who ironically was considered the founding father of quantum mechanics. Einstein’s relativistic description of space-time continuum, just a few years before quantum mechanics came along, implied the exact opposite: that the world was determinate and that there were no such things as free will, choice and uncertainty. That the universe was a giant program juggling to adjust many parameters to keep a few from changing. The space-time continuum wasn’t evolving. It was already there. The future had already transpired, and everything in the universe was merely traversing its own space-time path towards a predictable and fulfilled destiny. Quantum mechanics came along and put forth this great notion that the future was yet to happen, and yet was not necessarily influenceable or subject to manipulations by higher order matter. The great angst brought about the new revelations prompted Einstein to respond tersely that “God does not play dice with the universe,” and an exasperated Heisenberg, who led the young turks of quantum physics, to retort, “Please don’t tell God what he must or not do.”

For the last seven or eight decades, much scientific energy has been expended in attempting to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable worlds into one Grand Unified Theory of Everything, with no tangible success so far.

Interstellar.

The movie took my breath away. It made me happy, sad and even cry. America may be losing its edge on a few fronts, but by God, it still makes the best movies in the world.

Official trailer of “Interstellar.” (video)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vxOhd4qlnA

Interstellar is an awesome example of how science can form a real foundation for movie making. It’s the story of Coop, an astronaut who goes on a mission to find a new world to which humans can escape from Earth, which is in its final stage of destruction. The heart tugging relationship between Coop and his daughter, Murph, which plays out over the space-time continuum provides an emotional backdrop to the intergalactic quest. It’s a movie not just about science. At the heart of it, it’s a work of art which makes us wonder about the magnificence of everything. It gives us pause to ponder things, which might escape us otherwise in our humdrum lives.

Tomorrow never comes. Or does it?

So, is time travel possible? What happens when we enter a black hole? What happens when we die? Would we acquire the ability to move forwards and backwards on the space-time continuum, inside a four dimensional Tasseract? There are some fantastic scenarios that Interstellar portrays, much of it attributable to an artistic liberty and a creative license to imagine.

Of course, time travel is possible. We traveled from yesterday to today. 🙂 Seriously, since the arrow of time points only forward, it’s possible that travel to the past may be impossible, although it has not been mathematically or theoretically proven to be impossible.

Another way of looking at time travel into the past is to examine the nature of causality or ‘cause-effect’, a phenomenon made possible by the ‘flow’ of time. Cause always precedes effect in our universe. Effect may not be allowed to go back in time, to modify or destroy its cause, thanks to the uni-directional arrow of time.

If we were somehow able to enter a higher dimension from which we could witness the space-time continuum, it is then possible that we would be able to move along it to the past and the future. This would raise interesting paradoxes. What if you went into the past and somehow convinced your dad to never have children?

In which case, would we be allowed to revisit the past, if we solemnly promised to refrain from interfering with and changing it? If that were possible, we would merely observe the past as passive observers, just as we are when watching a movie. Wait, we can already do that by recording the past with a video camera, or simply in our memories. Memory is a special form of time travel into a specific part of the past in which we have participated, isn’t it?

Kids these days….

Why does time go by slower on Miller’s planet?

Miller’s planet, in Interstellar, is a water world, located just outside the event horizon of a massive black hole called Gargantua. A black hole is an anomaly in the universe, believed to have enormous mass concentrated in a singularity similar to the one from which the universe began. A blackhole can be looked at as a massive space-time curvature, inside or near which time slows down dramatically due to gravity.

“Wait, they aren’t mountains. They are tidal waves.” In a spectacular moment in the movie, Coop and crew realize that Miller’s planet, which because of its wobbling, really resembles a huge bowl in which water is careening from one edge to another causing tidal waves the size of mountains.

Since Miller’s planet is located within the gravitational field of Gargantua, a black hole with a mass of 100 million suns, each hour on it (we’re told) corresponds to 7 years for someone outside its field. By the time Coop and his partner return to their spaceship, their colleague and Coop’s daughter on Earth have aged by 23 years.

Later, Coop is pulled into the black hole, in which he spends a few minutes, during which another eighty years pass by on Earth. During this time, he enters the mysterious Tasseract, where he travels back in time to guide his past self and then Murph towards solving the set of equations, which allows them to eventually leave Earth, resettle near Saturn and find him. Is it really possible to exit a black hole once you’ve entered it? Unlikely. Is it possible that you can travel back to the past and alter it? Unlikely. Is it possible that our descendants, from the future, can help us escape our present? An exhilarating leap of faith and hopeful imagination.

All we are is.. dust in the wind.

The nature of tIme has been a matter of much speculation for thousands of years, even before Einstein and modern savants came along. Western philosophical and religious view of time has always been a linear, uni-directional one, with starting and ending points. Judeo-Christian-Islamic schools of thought portray time as coming into existence with the ‘creation’, and ending with ‘judgement day’, when the past, in its entirety, will be reviewed with an intent to judge faith and dispense justice. Eastern mystics took more exotic and intriguing stances on time. The Hindus and the Buddhists described time as a “kaala chakra,” cyclical in nature, without beginning or end, stretching into infinity, much as science views the universe. Creation and destruction of things are events that repeat themselves periodically on this cycle. Even Brahma, the creator himself, is subject to the laws of oblivion, and yields his way to a new Brahma when his end arrives. Vedic thinkers intuitively grasped the uncertainty which lies hidden beneath it all, and concluded that the purpose of life lay in enquiry aimed at drawing the distinction between the real and the unreal.

Regardless of our personal beliefs, aspirations and desires to shape our worlds as we wish them to be, and our chosen paths in the pursuit of what we like to call the Truth, enquiry into the nature of things leads us eventually to the comforting possibility that we are, in a true sense, nature gazing upon herself. That, while we may be insignificant lumps of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen on an inconsequential, tiny planet in some corner of a magnificent universe, we have, within our grasp, a great power: the ability to let go, and look upon the worlds with wonder and awe.

Happy journeys.

Kansas, “Dust in the Wind.” (video)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12DeNdF0KPA

The information in this post is drawn from many sources- mostly my readings over the years and my notes from them. One of the great blessings of ignorance is the ability to over simplify. In my anxiety to tell things simply, it is entirely possible that I may have mis-stated things. It is also possible that I may have misunderstood things. In fact, it is unlikely that this is error proof. If you spot anything amiss, please do let me know. I stand ready to be corrected. Thanks for reading.

I wrote this in November 2011. Inspired by a TED lecture, I jotted down a list of things that I believe in, or to put it in another way, the way I look at things. I’ve revisited it several times over the years and now am comfortable with sharing. This has been on the What Ho! page but I haven’t drawn specific attention to it until now.

I’d recommend this exercise to everyone. Writing is not just therapeutic. It forces one to continuously examine the meaning of statements. It helps us understand the source of our deepest desires and fears – both of which are connected to each other, and in the process, I hope, will bring lasting joy to you.

Naturally, this ‘list’ continues to be work in progress.

Things I believe in.

1. Everything is connected. There is an omnipresent, all pervasive spirit that binds the destiny of things, in this universe and any other universes that may exist. I call this spirit Para Brahman or simply ‘the Spirit.’

2. My existence is a manifestation of a larger purpose that is being fulfilled, both with and without my consent and knowledge. My life is a piece of a bigger picture, which I am unable to see in its fullness at the moment. The purpose of my life is to remove that which is unnecessary so as to be able to get a direct glimpse of this richness. I call that which is unnecessary as Maya.

3. Everything – animate and inanimate – possesses a singular ability to sense the connection to the larger picture. This springs from an indestructible essence of its being, that which I call the Atman or the Soul.

4. I believe in the continuous exercise and introspection of the mind and its free will – so I can rid myself of both of them. I value opinions the way I value tents on a cold wintry night on a mountainside. They provide us protection against the elements so we can stay warm for a little while and get blood coursing through our veins. But, we should dare to and inevitably must venture out into the snowstorms so we can scale the peaks. I believe in accumulating wings and legs and that which will help me move in any way, but not in setting up camps and staying rooted inside tents.

5. I have affinity for neither good nor bad, neither gods created by men nor men, neither virtuous nor evil, neither mine nor another, neither attachment nor detachment, or for any quality that has an opposite. Everything is relative. I will do my best to be good or bad, virtuous or evil, attached or detached and behave in ways – depending on what the situation calls for. I would like to practice disinterested observation in such matters for the purpose for comprehending what is not necessary, and for sensing the connection to the things around me. This practice I call Yoga.

6. I have no expectations. Anything I or others do or anything that happens to me or other things keeps me moving, forward or backward or sideways, in the quest. I view this ‘anything I or others do or anything that happens to me or other things’ as the continuous flow of energy or Karma. It is the way of things. I accept it to be true.

7. I do not desire ‘understanding’. Understanding gets in the way of experience. I am in search of experience and am willing to be led by where experience takes me and remain open to letting ‘understanding’ settle where it might.

8. I have a yearning to see ‘the bigger picture’ in all its richness and glory. I can sense its presence behind the curtain. I know that I will see it. Only I do not know when. I believe that – as long as I have the yearning – I will not see it. But this yearning is what fuels my journey. I do not know how to resolve this conundrum. Perhaps I need to give up my quest in order to fulfill it.

9. There is no life. There is no death. There is no time, nor will it run out. There is no race. There are no winners. There are no losers. There is no cause. There is no effect. There is only Karma – the continuous flow of energy. Everything changes from time to time as a result of Karma. Indeed, time is an illusion created by Karma. If there was no change, there would be no need to keep track of and measure ‘time’. At the ‘end’ when all Karma has ceased, we will all find ourselves united in the same place called whatever you may call it – heaven, hell or nothingness. And things will start all over again. That is the only destiny that I believe to be true, inevitable and unavoidable and one that fills me with wonder and awe. In this belief lies the true source of happiness or sat-chit-ananda.

10. I believe in the universal well being of all things and will do what I can towards that end. I cannot change the world because I don’t know much about it. I don’t believe in morals. There are no moral absolutes which transcend space and time. While I may profess sympathy, my goal is empathy and to be able to look at the things around us from another’s perspective. I do not wish for powers to change another’s life or this world. I wish to divest myself of all powers, prejudices and agendas, so I can remove the curtain and see. To this end, I will construct and destroy my own situational moral compasses. I will neither judge nor foist my morphing and ephemeral moral standards on another.

11. I do not have material evidence, the powers of persuasion, the intensity of purpose and the desire to convince another of my beliefs. I am open to the possibility that all or some of my beliefs are wrong, and will remain open to influence. I will do my utmost to exercise reason and intuition so I can sense the difference between what is expansive, profound and unknowable and that which is merely sophisticated, confining and complex. I call this sense my ‘consciousness’ or my ‘spiritual conscience’. This is the way I can deal with conflicts created in the mind.

If you’d like to stay in touch, you can join me on Twitter Follow @waatho

India – Cut and Dried takes artistic liberty in chronicling real experiences during my life in India between 2002 and 2014.

The Indians invented zero, built the Taj Mahal, threw the towel in and called it a day. Historians were told to take the next several hundred years off. Deep within the Indian psyche once lay an adventurous spirit which sought to understand the best of things. Now it asks, “‘What’s the worst that can happen?”

A couple of years back, I went to see a doctor in Bangalore. As luck would have it, he was one of those wizened, cynical men who have seen it all. The man waved me to a chair as he fiddled with a phone. He made no attempt to establish eye contact. As he fiddled, his sub-conscious voice rang out, “I’ve been in this profession for 40 years. I’ve seen it all. The Hippocratic Oath be damned. It’s not worth saving you people. You can wait until this app finishes downloading on my pathetic 2G connection. Feel free to leave anytime. What’s the worst that can happen?”

I took in the windowless room. The man had shut himself out from the rest of the world. And here I was, an unwelcome intrusion.

I’ve been to doctors in America. The startling thing about them is that they communicate. Rather fluently as a matter of fact. They use sentences with more than two words. They wear clean shirts. And shoes.

The doctor always resisted the temptation to slap me across the face. Instead he’d put his notepad down, look me in the eyeballs and explain why I wasn’t about to tragically die young.

As my thoughts wandered, the doctor in Bangalore continued to fiddle. After five minutes, he looked up and made fleeting eye contact through a mirror on the wall as though I was Medusa and he was Perseus.

Then I heard him speak. Hallelujah!

“So what’s your problem?”

“Umm.. we met last week.. ”

This caused him to lose any interest he might have had in me at this point. His eyes lowered and he reverted to Neroesque fiddling as I sat likely dying of an incurable ailment.

I waited in uncertainty. Sensing a rapidly losing cause, I spoke again.

“I have a ringing noise in my ears. You told me to get hearing tests done. I have brought the results.”

He looked up.

“Yes, I remember you. Why is it not ringing?”

I stared, wondering which of us had a hearing problem.

“I said that MY ears are ringing.”

“I know. I meant my phone.”

Foxed by his cryptic words, I stayed tuned in for further updates.

“I just bought a new phone. It’s not ringing. What could be wrong?”

He handed me a brand new Samsung Galaxy 2.

“Maybe if my phone rang and your ears didn’t, we could call it a win-win, no?”

He laughed. It was a good one. But it failed to move me. Resentful, I turned the volume of the phone up.

“Here you go.”

I handed the phone to him. His facial expression continued to indicate that interest in my welfare had not made an appearance yet.

“How about I give you my phone number and you call me?”

I like to think of myself as a Zen kind of guy, with an inner Buddha chanting Tat Tvam Asi and the works. I believe that anger resides only in the bosom of fools. I have let go. And I’ve been happy ever since. I even wrote a book on all of this. Yet I felt a rising tide of anger.

“You want me to leave now and call you later?”

He looked at me, his eyes crinkling as though they were staring at the sun.

“No, not like that. Can you call me so I can hear the phone ring?”

My inner Buddha struggled to process this request. Glumly I acceded. It made him distinctly happier.

“Let’s see your results.”

He opened the envelope and began reading. His next question was a wicked doosra.

“Have you ever stood in front of a large speaker?”

“No. Why?”

“Because you have lost 50% of your hearing at higher frequencies.”

I waited for more. I was pleasantly surprised to hear him continue.

“Your hearing is normal enough to hear humans speak. Isn’t that good enough?”

My inner Buddha fought valiantly to contain my inner Hercules from slaying the man with a machete in one fluid motion. Outwardly calm, I responded.

“You said that I’ve lost half my hearing at a higher frequency. Is this normal? How did this happen?”

“I told you already. You must have stood in front of a large speaker.”

“But I have not stood in front of a large speaker. I once watched Nitin Gadkari speak on TV. That doesn’t count, does it?,” I protested.

“You must have. Unless you are 60 years old. Anyway, how does it matter?”

His inner Buddha had stumped mine. I resorted to another line of attack.

“Can you make the ringing noise go away?”

“Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Are you willing to wear a hearing aid? Some people think they look weird.”

“If you put it that way, no.”

“Then I can’t make the ringing noise go away.”

“But I got your phone to ring. That was our deal.”

My plea fell on deaf ears. Pun intended.

“Sorry. There is nothing I can do.”

“Wait. Is this a symptom of something else which could be serious?”

“Like what?”

“You are the doctor. You tell me. Please.”

“Probably not. I don’t think so. Unlikely.”

“Probably? You don’t think so? You are not sure? Don’t you want to look inside my ears or something?”

“No.”

“Come on, doc. I say we check for something.”

“Like what?”

I was licked. I let go.

“Fine. Let me understand what happened just now. I fixed your phone. And then you told me that you can’t fix my hearing. That I have to live with a ringing noise in my ears. That we should not bother because I am PROBABLY not dying of something serious right now. Is that correct?”

“Correct. Look at it another way. What’s the worst that can happen? You’ll just lose all your hearing in another 10 or 20 years. Speaking of bad things, do you think I should get a screen protector for my phone?”

At this juncture, I did as any normal Indian would. I threw in the towel and called it a day.